I have some questions, about the UFO series, especially about ET.
i played and i am still playing the UFO trilogy and the story is kind of obvious ( i mean, there are some dialogues between characters and such stuff) but what about a story in ET?:confused: i didnīt play it for very long, because somehow i missed the story? sure, during the game there are new enemies and bigger UFOs but, yea... do i have to interrogate some aliens to get to know something interesting? (and how do i know i can interrogate an alien?) well, i hope you know what i try to ask :)

and another question: is it true that there will be an UFO ET2 ?

thanks

owl208

12-13-2010, 09:39 AM

I will try to answer your questions.

1. What UFO trilogy are you talking about? XCOM? UFO Afterlight?

UFO Extraterrestrials (UFO:ET) is a single title (Gold is simply a modded version of the original) developed by Chaos Concepts. UFO:ET takes place on the planet Esperanza and the aliens are trying to wipe us out, just like they did on Earth. UFO ET changes the ending of the first XCOM, claiming we lost and an Earthling/XCOM colony seedship left for Esperanza before the final defeat to start over, but alas, the aliens have found us.

If you are talking about the XCOM series, (UFO: ET's supposed spritual successor) the story for that series is that Earth is under assault be Aliens (XCOM 1 Enemy Unknown). When Earth (XCOM) defeats the aliens on Mars in the final mission, supposedly a beam activates a sleeping bunch of aliens in Earth's ocean, generating XCOM2 Terror from the Deep. This leads to additional versions, such as XCOM 3 Apocalyspe (Defeating the aliens in another dimension), XCOM 4 Interceptor (Defeating the aliens in space) and finally an XCOM based shooter, defeating the aliens in a first person shooter.

As for the UFO Aftermath/Aftershock/Afterlight, this series too tries to be a spiritual successor to XCOM1. In Aftermath, the few human survivors of an alien attack were forced into a devil's deal to preserve their race and abandoned the Earth's surface to the invaders, so they change the end story of XCOM1 by some staying and some leaving earth. In return, some of humanity was moved to orbital colonies and to a Mars colony and some stayed behind. Aftershock features the subsequent events on Earth a 50 years later, while Afterlight focuses on the hitherto ignored inhabitants of Mars concurrently with Aftershock.

2. Chaos Concepts is currently working on UFO:ET 2. No idea when it is going to be released, but it will most likely be late 2011. They are a small indie company and work slow.

3. The issue of interrogating aliens in UFO ET is a bit complicated, so I will try to explain how to go about it as there are several steps.

a. You first have to have an alien containment building built at your main base. Until you have this buildng, you cannot capture or interrogate aliens. Once this building is built, you can capture aliens. You can build this building right at the start of a new game and it is recommended that you do just that as your first order of business before anything else.

b. You capture aliens in ground assault missions against a UFO, base, terror mission or base defense. By far, the UFO is the most common ground assault mission and you have to win the mission in order to obtain the alien you captured. You can do a ground assault mission against a UFO by a) shooting it down and sending a transporter filled with soldiers to that location or b) by sending a transporter filled with soldier to a landed ufo site before the UFO leaves. A downed UFO is a white circle on the geoscape, while a landed ufo is a green circle on the geoscape.

c. You capture an alien by stunning it. This can be done multiple ways. 1) Using a Rocket Launcher with Stun Ammo (Blue Color) which is a ranged weapon and 2) Using a Stun Rod, which is a melee weapon. Stun rods require ammo. [There is an undocumented third way and it is by using a stasis grenade. This has to be reseached and is available late game]

Once you have your weapon of choice, use it against an alien in a ground assault mission. The alien will drop unconcious if the attack is successful. You may have to shoot or attack the alien multiple times before it drops unconscious. At the end of a successful mission, the captured alien will automatically be transported back to your main base providing you have an alien containment building at your main base and your assault aircraft makes it back to the main base without being shot down. (You carry the captured alien in your aircraft's cargo hold) This works the same way it did in XCOM 1, if you are familar with that game.

d. Not all aliens are valuable. You will have to determine which ones are. There are regular aliens and there are alien commanders. The alien commanders have their own research tree and not all races have commanders. You can tell if you encounter an alien commander because the border on the ground assault screen for their image when spotted is gold. The alien commanders themselves are also green in color. Only 3 races have alien commanders, but I don't want to spoil it for you unless you want me to by telling you which ones. The regular aliens also have unique research, but some of them don't yield anything. You are told if the alien is worthless in the post combat mission report following a successful ground assault.

e. Once you get back to the main base safely with your captured alien, you will have to research that alien in order to unlock the additional info they give you access to. Some advance the plot, while others provide equipment advances.

f. You will find that alien swarm assault missions are similar to normal UFO assault missions, except you are guaranteed at least 2 alien commanders in the ground assault phase, in addition to a hefty bonus for shooting down the UFO and successfully completing the assault mission phase. You can tell which UFO is the swarm leader by clicking on the UFO in the geoscreen because it will read: Swarm Leader. You will also recover a special unique item at the end of a successful swarm mission ground assault. These items can only be obtained from swarm leaders. On extremely rare cases, you might uncover one during a normal ground combat, but it is *really* rare. These are super shields, super weapons, teleporters, cloaking devices, etc. They will show up in your main base soldier or aircraft inventory. You do NOT find them on the field of battle being carried by the aliens or alien commanders.

Hope this answers your questions. I know a lot about UFO ET and how it was modded, so ask away.

NuclearYuri

12-13-2010, 10:17 AM

WOW :D

thank you for this very long and explicit post :)

and with "UFO: trilogy" i was referring to The After.... series.

never played x-com, but iīm thinking of buying it at steam.
(so, you say its very good and worth it? :) )

so, now i finally know, why i couldnīt never capture an alien, i never built an interrogation room. :)

thank you very much :)

owl208

12-13-2010, 11:42 AM

You are welcome.

I would really recommend XCOM if you like UFO ET. The games are very close, though XCOM has much more tension, especially when your soldiers start getting mind controlled. Great pressure.

XCOM 1 is the best of the series. XCOM 2 is more of the same. XCOM 3 was good too, but different from 1 & 2 as it was a remake using a new graphics engine. XCOM Interceptor and the first person shooter were forgetable.

So I recommend 1, 2 and 3, skip the rest. Only get XCOM 2 if you like XCOM 1 and want more of the same. XCOM 3 is completely unique, but has similar elements typical of the series, like soldiers, research, ufos, etc.

NuclearYuri

12-14-2010, 01:36 AM

sounds interesting :)

but first iīll play the after-series. ;)

btw: is there any game similiar to xcom / Ufo-after....
that you can play as multiplayer-game?

Kazei

12-14-2010, 07:11 AM

Chaos Concepts didn't develop Gold, they merely asked permission from BMAN to incorporate his mods into it. The last I heard they actually hired him to help develop UFO2.

owl208

12-14-2010, 08:49 AM

True. The real story is a lot more complicated and involved.

The original vanilla version of ET was, well lacking. A lot of people started modding ET on the main forum, people like razef, baldhor, iskander, moriarty, sage, phoenix-d, ksnoopy, onvi, bman and the list goes on. After a couple of months, the clamor built up in the ET community for a bundled patch that incorporated a number of the best mods.

Moriarty and Iskander led the way with MIAB and Franken-mods. Bman came along and combined those mods and added his own stuff. A lot of stuff. Bman's Ease of Use mod built on the work of at least 30 other modders. At first, he had a hard install verison, then came up with an easier to install version, mainly for losers like myself, who don't have the computer software installation skills. LOL

Soon after Bman started his master mod, there was a titantic fallout on the official forums over content, filesharing and file copying between the forum moderators and forum participants, so a fairly large group left the official forums and migrated over to ufo-scene. Bman's mod continued to grow until it got attention in some published reviews and Chaos Concepts approached him or he approached them. Bman had kinda drifted into other projects at this time and a guy name Coasty picked up modding his Ease of Use mod and the final mod version was 4.07. The game was released again as UFO ET Gold by Chaos Concept, but not until they stripped out all the stuff that couldn't be sold because of copywrite laws, like the XCOM aliens mod, etc. Hence 4.07 "Lite."

Rather than post all this, I just said UFO ET had been modded and developed by Chaos Concept, since they were the driving force behind the creation of UFO: ET Gold at least as far as getting it commercially published and released. I remember when this came up because Bman asked everyone whom he could reach for permission to use their mods.

Right now, Grayfiend is the primary modder of UFO ET with his own mod titled: UNIMOD, which picks up from where BMan/Coasty left off.

So there you go. I know because I was there for most all of it. I was working on a master guide for the game, before I got hurt real bad in a car accident and was off the shelf for a couple of years, so I never got to finish it. :(

Bman is involved in the development of UFO:ET2, so I expect that game to be very good. :)

NuclearYuri

12-15-2010, 07:28 AM

well, all i can say is again WOW :D

iīm surprised UFO ET is known at all and know i hear this awesome story :D

well, so, is there any possibility to "upgrade" my normal ET version with some of those mods, or would i have to buy the gold edition?

iīm getting more and more impressed, and i canīt wait until ET2 will be released

owl208

12-15-2010, 08:01 AM

I think that really depends on your cash flow and tolerance level. I really recommend the game-it's a lot of fun, especially after the mods. Before the mods, I wouldn't have recommended it because it gets really boring. All of the extra equipment, UFO swarms, and AI improvement included in the mods really make it a better game.

If you want a simple answer to your question, plunk down $10 and get the Gold version. The gold version is real easy to install and has most everything you'd want to see, especially since you haven't played XCOM1. The stuff missing won't mean anything to you, in other words, since it's more nostalgia content.

If you don't have the cash and have the patience, you can download Bman's mod for free, but be warned it takes some work to download all the files & patches and place them in the correct folders. There was also a problem with one of the patches installing to the wrong directory, so it is a bit of a hassle to get it all working correctly, but it is doable.

I can't post the link here to Bman's mod because Steam is trying to sell the Gold version, but if you pm me, I can send you a link to the fansite where it is available if you want to go that path and download it.

NuclearYuri

12-16-2010, 10:00 AM

i think i will spend those 10 bucks ;)

but thereīs no multiplayer at all in the gold version?

(like hot seat or steam to steam)

owl208

12-16-2010, 03:46 PM

No. There isn't any multiplayer option. It's just single player: you vs. aliens.